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which of these many corpses here I ought to take. If this night shall pass away without my accomplishing my object, I will enter the fire, I will not put up with disgrace." But the Vetála discovered the king's intention, and pleased with his courage, he withdrew that delusion. Then the king beheld only one Vetála on the tree in the corpse of a man, and he took it down, and put it on his shoulder, and once more started off with it. And as he trudged along, the Vetála again said to him, " King, your fortitude is wonderful: so listen to this my tale."
Story of the Bráhman's son who failed to acquire the magic power.:—There is a city called Ujjayiní, inferior only to Bhogavatí and Amarávatí, which Śiva, who was won by the toilsome asceticism of Gaurí, being in love with the matchless pre-eminence of its excellence, himself selected as his habitation. It is full of various enjoyments, to be attained only by distinguished well-doing; in that city stiffness and hardness is seen only in the bosoms of the ladies, curvature only in their eye-brows,*[1] and fickleness only in their rolling eyes; darkness only in the nights; crookedness only in the ambiguous phrases of poets; madness only in elephants; and coldness only in pearls, sandal-wood juice, and the moon.
In that city there was a learned Bráhman, named Devasvámin, who had offered many sacrifices, and possessed great wealth, and who was highly honoured by the kin, whose name was Chandraprabha. In time there was born to that Bráhman's son, named Chandrasvámin, and he, though he had studied the sciences, was, when he grew up, exclusively devoted to the vice of gambling. †[2] Now once on a time that Bráhman's son, Chandrasvámin, entered a great gambling-hall to gamble. Calamities seemed to be continually watching that hall with tumbling dice for rolling eyes, like the black antelope in colour, and saying to themselves, " Whom shall we seize on here?" And the hall, full of the noise of the altercations of gamblers, seemed to utter this cry, " Who is there whose wealth I could not take away? I could impoverish even Kuvera the lord of Alaká." Then he entered the hall, and playing dice with gamblers, he lost his clothes and all, and then he lost borrowed money in addition. And when he was called upon to pay that impossible sum, he could not do it, so the keeper of the gambling- hall seized him and beat him with sticks. ‡[3] And that Bráhman's son, when beaten with sticks all over his body, made himself motionless as a stone, and to all appearance dead, and remained in that state.
- ↑ * Bhanga also means defeat.
- ↑ † This vice was prevalent even in the Vedic age. See Zimmer, Alt-Indischea Leben, pp. 283-287; Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. V, pp. 425-430. It is well-known that the plot of the Mahábhárata principally turns on this vice.
- ↑ ‡ Compare the conduct of Máthura in tho Mrichchhakatika. For the pennileas state of the gambler, see p. 195, and Gaal, Märchen der Magyaren, p. 3.
